We’ve discovered a cheaper way to edit PDF files, using a new $40 program called deskUnPDF from Docudesk.

PDF, of course, stands for Adobe’s popular “Portable Document Format,” which preserves everything about an original document so it can be sent through e-mail and look just like the original. The PDF can’t be edited, however. That’s fine for most purposes, but sometimes you want to make changes. Several programs are available to make a PDF file open for editing, but they’re all more expensive than UnPDF, the lowest-priced one costing more than twice as much.

We used deskUnPDF on a complex newsletter created with Adobe Illustrator and saved as a PDF. It converted the newsletter to a Word document with just a single click. The newsletter’s title spilled off the page, but that was the only problem and an easy one to fix. You can get a free trial version to try out at the Docudesk Web site: Docudesk.com.

If you want to try out other PDF programs yourself, you can look at free trials for Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional at Adobe.com; PDF Converter at Nuance.com and PDF Transformer at Abbyy.com.